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Can Employer Usurp Copyright On GPL-Derived Work?
An anonymous reader writes "I am a recent graduate, and I've been working on my own on a project that uses GPL-licensed libraries. Later a university department hired me, on a part-time basis, to develop this project into a solution that they needed. The project's size increased over time and soliciting help from the open source community seemed like the obvious thing to do. However, when I suggested this, my boss was not interested, and it was made clear to me that the department's position was that copyright of the whole thing belonged to them. Indeed, by default work created for an employer belongs to the employer, so I may have gotten myself in the same trap discussed here years ago. Even though I want to release my code to the public I don't know whether I have the legal right to do so. I did start the project on my own. And, since no written or verbal agreement was ever made to transfer copyright over to my employer, I question whether they can claim that they now own the extended version of the project. Also, the whole project relies on GPL libraries, and without those libraries it would be useless. Can they still claim copyright and prevent me from publishing the source code even though it is derived from GPL software?" Some early commenters on the submission pointed out that it matters whether the libraries were licensed under the LGPL vs. the GPL.
no GPL violation if they do not distribute. what are your grounds for suggesting this is a GPL violation ?
Personally I think he'd be going at this from the human angle.
It's a university?
The careers of Academics are generally heavily based on publishing the work they've done with their names attached.
For coders it's less explicit but having a large body of published work can also be important and academics generally get the idea of open source.
Talk to some senior academics you get on well with.
Talk about it the same way as you would if the university were not allowing you to publish research done on uni time.
They may not like the idea and weigh in on your side which would be a big help.
Worst case you don't really get anywhere.
Best case some bullish professor will arrange things so your work gets published.
You may end up with some academics name on the code along with yours.
Storming about and arguing about who owns the code is very unlikely to do any good since you probably don't and the GPL doesn't help you on that score.
Allies in the right place are worth a thousand lawyers.
The blunt truth is that he made two stupid mistakes.
1) He didn't discuss the university's position on this and get it made clear in the contract in the first place, and
2) He came to Slashdot for legal advice.
It's been shown countless times that Slashdotters in general *do not understand how law works*. They assume that one can deduce how the law works logically, and that's how it is.
Well, it's not. The only way to know about how the law works is to learn how it works. It's not always logical, it's not always the way it *should* be (in a reasonable *or* in a logical world). I've actually been criticised for pointing out the latter, as if pointing out that the law doesn't work in that idealised way meant I endorsed its flaws (which is another stupid thing to do, but Slashdotters aren't always the detached paragons of common-sense that some would like to see themselves as).
Even if they understand the GPL in isolation, this case requires one to know how this relates to employment laws, jurisdictions, "works for hire", blah blah...
Bottom line- being an expert in IT and related fields does not qualify you to answer legal questions. IANAL, and neither are the vast majority of those contributing to this thread. And the problem is sorting out those who really *do* know what they're talking about from those who simply think they do.
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